


ghost stories

by ZeGabz



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Major Rogue One spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:26:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeGabz/pseuds/ZeGabz
Summary: Rey's daydreams speak to her sometimes.The voices echo Rebellions.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Rogue One Thursday, and had to write my emotions down. The usual. This is very, VERY messy, but whatever. MAJOR spoilers, of course.

_Jyn Erso had always known death to be a loss of oneself. As someone who wasn't force-sensitive, she knew her chances of becoming a "spirit" were slim. She was a small, meaningless nobody. The Force had no need to preserve her._

_The last second of her life is the longest. A thousand thoughts run through her head. And all of them are of Cassian._

_This man who she just met, who never left her side, who spared her father's life, who stuck around when their mission was doomed to fail. This man with young eyes and a smile undamaged by war._

_She knows with an odd sense of certainty that if they had survived, she would have loved him. Images of him holding her in the Alliance base on Yavin IV, pressing soft kisses into her hair in the moonlight flood her mind. Of him catching her hand during strategy meetings, tracing shapes into her palm._

_"I wish we had time," she whispers. She doesn't need to explain. He knows._

_"We'll have eternity," Cassian replies._

_When death comes, it's surprisingly quick. There's a flash of white, hot pain, but Jyn clutches Cassian tighter and closer and focuses on the warmth of his arms, zeroing in on the sound of his erratic heartbeat and then silence as the darkness overtakes her._

_And then, she opens her eyes and **sees**._

 

* * *

 

Nights on Jakku are stuffy and short. The sun rises early and sets late. Rey realizes early on that it's both a blessing and a curse, because while the darkness provides welcome relief from the blistering heat, it also hides many dangers.

The downed AT-AT that serves as her shelter (not home, home was a lake and a smile and a hug, and it's all fading away so very fast) is a good place to hide from bandits and hunters and slavers, but it can feel very lonely. Just Rey, her doll, and cold metal.

She glances at her wall, hundreds of notches carved in, and wants to cry. Last year, she celebrated with her family (three of them? Five? Why can't she remember?) and now, she's alone.

"Happy birthday, Rey."

She whirls around, hands reaching for her staff, but nobody's there. She looks at her doll, eyes wide.

"Did you just speak?" she asks the doll, mystified.

"I wouldn't say that." This time, when Rey turns, a woman is sitting on her bunk, brown hair lazily pulled back and dressed in a muted brown tunic and gray pants. Rey lunges at the woman, but she disappears.

"What's happening?" she asks the air, hopelessly. The woman appears again, this time leaning on the wall. "I'm hallucinating."

"Sure, we'll go with that," the woman says. "Don't worry, child, I'm not here to hurt you." Rey sits down warily, hands still clutching her small staff. "I'm Jyn."

 

* * *

 

Jyn tells Rey stories.

Rey loves the ones about the Rebels the most, fighting against the evil Empire. Her favorites are the tales of a pilot who became a spy. She notices Jyn's eyes sparkle whens he tells these stories, and wonders why that is.

"Can you tell me about the Death Star?" she asks one night, curiosity getting the better of her.

Jyn disappears.

 

* * *

 

"You've been daydreaming again." Rey rolls her eyes as her imaginary friend appears next to her bike. "Of your family."

She doesn't know exactly what Jyn is. When she was a girl, she told herself Jyn was a dream, a friend she made up because she was lonely. But as she's gotten older, she's begun to wonder if perhaps the tales of ghosts pirates told at the spaceports really did hold water. 

"It passes the time," she says casually.

"I know."

Rey looks at Jyn curiously. "You sound bothered."

"Daydreaming does you no good."

"I guess I'll just stare at the sand instead," Rey replies drily. Jyn's eyes narrow.

"Dreaming is easy. But looking at the world in front of you, that's the trick."

"There is no _world_ for me to look at!" Rey snaps. "Now unless you want to tell me more stories or talk about my latest salvage, get lost. I have no desire to be vaguely scolded by a ghost."

"Fine."

"Fine," Rey huffs, grabbing a bag of spare parts and loading it onto her bike. "I'm going to sell these, then go to the flight simulator. I could use some practice."

"It's broken. You should save those parts to fix it." Rey frowns.

"How do you know?" she demands.

"I'm a ghost. I know everything."

"Sure." Rey hops on her bike and pauses. "Guess I should go to the simulator, then. Just in case."

Jyn smiles.

 

* * *

 

Rey wonders if she will stop seeing Jyn once she arrives at the Resistance base. But as she's packing her things on the Millennium Falcon to go find Luke Skywalker, Jyn appears, sitting on a cargo box.

Rey just looks at her for a moment, then sets down her things, crossing her arms. She'd passed off Jyn as a hallucination, a ghost or a daydream for years, a figment of her loneliness and imagination.

But after Starkiller Base…after having Kylo Ren invade her mind, after summoning a lightsaber to her with her mind, after these are your first steps…

"Who are you?" she asks. Jyn goes very still. "Are you sent by the Force? Do you know what happened to me when I touched Luke's lightsaber?" Jyn smiles, slowly.

"You've grown a lot," she says softly. Rey's interrogation dies on her lips, and the weight of Han's death and her fight with Kylo Ren render her nearly speechless.

"It's been a rough few days," Rey murmurs, thoughts drifting to Finn and Han, again. Jyn's mouth tugs into a smile without humor.

"I know the feeling." Rey frowns, stepping forward slowly.

"Who are you?" Rey repeats. Jyn sighs.

"My name is Jyn Erso. I worked with the Rebel Alliance to steal the plans for the Death Star."

"So you are a ghost."

"Yes."

"And why have you been haunting me for all these years?" The other woman shrugs.

"I grew up alone, abandoned on the streets. I didn't want you to be completely alone." She looks down at her feet. "It's hard to explain."

"Why did you never tell me this? I thought I was hallucinating you for years."

"You wouldn't have believed me."

Rey grimaces. She has a point. "You stole the Death Star plans?" she asks. "Did you work with Luke Skywalker?"

An unreadable look passes over Jyn's face, almost a wistful smile. "I never met a Jedi in my life. But Skywalker finished what I started."

Rey wonders if Jyn will disappear, but asks anyways, "How did you die?" To her surprise, Jyn doesn't hesitate.

"We died on a planet called Scarif. The Empire realized its plans had been compromised and destroyed the base we stole the plans from. We couldn't escape."

"We?"

Jyn laughs without humor. "Sorry, I never think of my death as just mine. Me and Cassian. My partner. We died together. As did the rest of our crew."

Rey feels her lingering pain and staggers back as if she's been struck. "I'm sorry," she gasps.

The wistful smile returns, along with a flash of fierce pride. "We knew what we died for. Luke, Leia and Han continued the fight for us. And this Resistance that you have fallen into, they are continuing our fight as well. I'm sorry I never told you any of this. It's hard to think about."

Rey offers Jyn a watery smile. "I'm sorry that the peace didn't last."

"It never does. All we can do is make sure that the violence never does either." Jyn's visage begins to flicker, and she offers Rey a nod. "Go. Find Luke. And may the Force be with you."

 

* * *

 

Rey wonders if she spent more time in thought on Jakku or training with Luke.

Her _father_.

That thought alone is enough to have her completely thrown. Luke denies leaving her on Jakku, claiming he returned to the Jedi Academy all those years ago to find her mother dead and her missing.

"I almost hoped that Ben had taken you with him. But I couldn't feel you in the Force anymore. I thought…if I had known you were out there…Rey, I _swear_ I would have come for you."

He gives her time before he begins to train her, time to take everything in. She sits alone on the cliff she found him on, staring out at the endless, dull ocean, the brisk salty wind comforting against her skin.

Luke said her memories of her childhood were locked away. A Force block, he called it. She wonders, briefly, what her life would be like if Kylo Ren had not torn everything apart. Would she be a Jedi, having fought alongside her mother and father her whole life? Would Han be alive?

"Daydreaming again, I see."

Rey looks up to see Jyn sitting beside her, eyes looking out over the ocean.

"I can't help but wonder," Rey ventures, "What my life would be like if he had never betrayed us."

Jyn looks at Rey for a long moment. "I often wonder," she says softly, "What would have happened if Cassian and I had survived stealing the Death Star plans."

"Were the two of you…?" Rey trails off, her question clear. Jyn smiles sadly.

"No. But I think that if we would have survived, I could have loved him. I only knew him for a few days, and trusted him for even less. But he was the first person who ever stayed." Jyn's eyes go distant, soft. "He was such a good man. He did horrible things, but he was as good as I'd ever seen. We would have been happy, I think."

"I'm sorry," Rey says, because she can't think of anything else to say.

"I'm not," Jyn replies. "I died knowing I wasn't alone. That's more than I ever imagined." She tilts her head, almost curiously. "You've never been alone, Rey. I learned that in the final moments of my life. But you don't need to. You have a fight ahead of you, but you are surrounded by amazing people, just as I was. And you can have the future Cassian and I never got."

"It's so much," Rey admits, burying her head in her hands. "I'm not ready."

"We never are," Jyn says. "But you are strong. And you are more prepared than you believe."

Rey looks away from Jyn, out at the sea once again. "I have a father."

Jyn smirks a little. "That tends to be the case with most." Rey rolls her eyes.

"I don't know what to do about him. Luke." She digs her fingers into the grass, plucking it from the ground. "I spent years staring at the skies of Jakku, praying that my family would come for me. But Luke never came. He just gave up and I grew up like an orphan."

"He would have come if he had known."

Rey wheels on her. "You should have gone to him, then! Told him he had a little girl close to starving in the desert!"

"I wish I could have. But you seem to be the only one who can hear me. I'm not a Jedi, Rey. You hear me for a reason."

"I don't understand," Rey admits, the fight draining out of her. "I just…I wish it wasn't like this. I can feel his pain when he looks at me."

"An annoying side-effect of being a Jedi."

"I remind him of what he lost," Rey whispers. Jyn shakes her head.

"No. you remind him of what he's _found_."

 

* * *

 

On her birthday, Rey is not visited by any ghosts or visions. She spends the day at the Resistance base, with Finn and Poe and Poe's entire squadron, drinks flowing freely as her father lingers at the hangar's edge with a soft smile on his face.

For a fleeting moment, Rey thinks she spies Jyn sitting on the wing of Poe's X-Wing, a handsome young man beside her, holding her hand. Jyn smiles, and when Rey blinks, she and the man are gone.

"Not alone," Rey murmurs softly, turning back to her friends. Finn grasps her arm and tugs her into a warm hug, and Poe begins to sing a song. Rey laughs, smiles, and closes her eyes, never wanting to forget the simple joy she feels in this moment.

_Welcome home._


End file.
